BY LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Division of Forestry welcomed back one of its district foresters from overseas on Jan. 12.

Eric Summerfield, a 2004 Purdue University graduate and corporal in the Indiana National Guard, deployed to Iraq last February and spent the year as a maintenance shop foreman supervising 12 soldiers at a military base 60 miles north of Baghdad.

“I missed my family; that was a big one,” he said. “And a lot of times it was just simple little things, like being locked down in this little area and not being able to go for a drive when you’re tired of your roommate. In order to protect other people’s freedom, your own freedom is taken away.”

Summerfield quickly discovered the environment in the Middle East was a far cry from the woodlands in DNR’s Forestry District 13, which includes Carroll, Howard, Tipton, Hamilton, Boone, Montgomery, Fountain, Warren, Tippecanoe and Clinton counties.

“We spent a month in Kuwait preparing, and there was just desert everywhere,” he said.

Expecting to see mostly desert in Iraq as well, Summerfield was surprised to learn some trees dotted the arid and shrubby landscape. But none looked familiar.

“Everybody knew I was in forestry, so people were asking me what the trees were, but I didn’t know.”

After doing research on the Internet and contacting his former
professors at Purdue, Summerfield was able to identify some, but not all, of the trees he saw. Eucalyptus were common, and he also saw a few unidentified cedars and willows. Even his college professors were unable to identify some species.

“They don’t look like anything we’ve got here,” he said.
Summerfield decided to go into forestry after spending six years on active duty in the military right after high school. His childhood years as a devout Boy Scout helped him make the career change.

“I looked into different majors and when I saw that you could get a degree in forestry I thought, ‘I can be a Boy Scout for the rest of my life!’ I don’t think people realize that being a forester is a real job,” he explained.

Summerfield was in college on Sept. 11, 2001, and contemplated going on active duty in the military again, but ultimately decided he “wasn’t interested in being gone all the time.”

Instead he opted for the National Guard, which would enable him to help people here at home in the wake of natural disasters such Hurricane Katrina. Or so he thought.

By the time he graduated from Purdue, the United States was involved in two wars and the difference between being in the National Guard and being on active duty in the military had diminished.

Instead of helping in the Midwest after it was pummeled by flooding, tornadoes and storms last year, as he had envisioned, Summerfield found himself deployed to the Middle East.

The experience didn’t deter him from reenlisting in the National Guard for another six years, and he doesn’t expect to go back to the Middle East any time soon.

“I’m hoping not, and the way it sounds now they may be done with large-scale deployment (of the National Guard) for a while. But it’s always a possibility,” he said.